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The web was invented in 1989, so mostly it didn't. Before that there were BBSes that you could dial into. From there, you could chat with other users who happened to be logged onto the same server or download text documents and whatnot that others had uploaded.

Ah. Yeah it's those BBS's I've heard of that sound kind of cool. I'm sure they mostly sucked, but the idea sounds cool.

Well, you were siloed to whatever _local_ BBSs existed and you could dial without paying a fortune for long distance calls. If you lived anywhere outside select urban centers then you were out of luck. So yeah... let's count our blessings.

There were free BBS's, AOL and Compuserve where you would dial in with your modem. I kind of miss those days to be honest.

Gotcha!

Well….

Before modems, we used to drive to peoples houses and literally swap floppy disks of software and files!

There would be meetups.

I was just a kid, but my Dad used to network with other computer owning parents and friends!

So Sneaker Net essentially.

We’d go to computer shows too!